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2024 Annual ND EPSCOR STATE Conference

About the conference

This one-day, state-wide conference to be held at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks on November 21, 2024, is intended for all ND faculty, post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and STEM professionals. The conference's focus is to provide opportunities to share research results and promote opportunities for collaboration in STEM fields.

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Registration for our conference has closed. Please email ndepscor@ndus.edu with questions.

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10/28: Room block closed
11/4: Registration closed
​11/6: Abstract revisions due
11/20: Bio & Biomedical Computation Networking Seminar
11/21: State Conference

Travel arrangements

Participants can reserve rooms at the Canad Inn at the state rate of $96.30. The room block is called “EPSCoR State Conference.” Reservations can be made by calling the Canad Inn at (701) 772-8404 or 888-332-2623. Individual state employees will need to provide their tax exempt number at time of reservation. The room block will be available until October 28.

2024 Bio & Biomedical Computation Networking Seminar logo

UND, NDSU, & ND-ACES are sponsoring a pre-conference networking seminar on bio and biomedical computation before the ND EPSCoR Annual Conference. 

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This evening networking seminar is to be held at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks on November 20, 2024, from 5 pm to 8 pm, and is intended for all ND faculty, post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students. Appetizers will be provided. The event will include two rounds of oral presentations, a poster session, and a networking session.

 ANnual conference Agenda

7:30 AM

Registration, light breakfast, hang posters

8:30 AM

Conference opening and land acknowledgement

9:00 AM

Plenary Speaker Dr. Rebecca Heise, Department chair of biomedical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), on Lung-derived Extracellular Matrix Materials for Disease Modeling and Drug Delivery

10:00 AM

10 minute break

10:10 AM

Dr. Andy Nonaka, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, invited speaker on The AMReX Software Framework for Extreme Scale Modeling and Simulation

10:40 AM

NSF EPSCoR Program Director Dr. Jose Colom-Ustariz

11:10 AM

10 minute break

2023 ND EPSCoR conference participants

12:20 PM

Lunch and TCU panel: Nurturing STEM and Research at ND Tribal Colleges and Universities

Moderator: Sheridan McNeil, ND EPSCoR Director of Tribal Partnerships

1:50 PM

Poster Session A (even numbered posters)

3:35 PM

Poster Session B (odd numbered posters)

5:05 PM

Closing remarks

concurrent presentation session 1

11:20 AM

ND-ACES and Related Research (Ballroom #1)

Moderated by Kalpana Katti

  • Savannah Brown, UND, Evaluation of Schlafen Family Proteins in Tripe Negative Breast Cancer

  • Connor Edvall, NDSU, Synergistic Delivery of Encapsulated Drugs to Hypoxia for Stemness Reduction in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

  • Shrinwanti Ghosh, NDSU, 3D in-vitro Model: Platform for Evaluating Anticancer-Drugs Targeting Organ-Specific TME in Primary & Metastatic Breast-cancer

  • Rayat Hossain, NDSU, Azobenzene-Incorporated Polymersomes for Control of Targeted Drug Delivery to Triple Negative Breast Cancer 

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Research Track A (Ballroom #2)

Moderated by Amanda Hagge

  • Jeremy Straub, NDSU,  Overview of AI Development Efforts and the Opportunities They Provide

  • Boampong Asare, United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), Analyzing Epsilon Effects on Exact and Composite Solutions via Matched Asymptotic Expansion

  • Benu Bansal, UND,  Nested Named Entity Recognition using Multilayer BERT-based Model

  • Ali Pakbaz, NDSU, Numerical Analysis on the Design of an Evaporator for a PV/microchannel Direct-Expansion CO2 Heat Pump

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Research Track B (Ballroom #3)

Moderater TBA

  • Wayne Seames, UND, An Introduction to the NSF EPSCoR RII Track 2 Project: Sustainable Engineering Infrastructures and Solutions for Tribal Energy Sovereignty (TES)

  • Corey Smith, UND, A Data Science Summer Program for Tribal College Students:  The Virtual Indigenous Data Science Academy

  • ​Igor Ovchinnikov, UND, Paleomitogenomics and the Holocene population demography of the Northern Plains bison 

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concurrent presentation session 2

2:35 PM

ND-ACES and Related Research (Ballroom #1)

Moderator TBA

  • Hanmant Gaikwad, NDSU, Evaluating the Role of Na-Montmorillonite Clay in Biomineralization and Stem Cell Osteogenesis in Nanoclay Scaffolds

  • Khwaja Hossain, Mayville State University, The Development of Plant Polymer Scaffolds for the Growth and Development of Triple-negative Breast Cancer Cells

  • Archana Dhasarathy, UND, Epigenetic priming during the Epithelial-mesenchymal transition

  • Shubhashri Ambhore, NDSU, Peptide conjugated hypoxia-responsive nanoparticles to decrease triple-negative breast cancer stemness

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Research Track A (Ballroom #2)

Moderated by Emily Biggane

  • Manohar Sah, UTTC, Ethnomathematical Practices of the Tharu Community in Nepal

  • Katherine McCarville, Minot State University, Implications of new luminescence (OSL) dates from sediments beneath a giant erratic boulder on the Iowan Surface, northeast Iowa 

  • Ram Hona, UTTC, Oxygen Deficient Perovskite as a Catalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

  • Thomas Stach, NDSU, Adsorption of H2S and SO2 on SiO2 Supported Graphene- A Surface Science Study

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Research Track B (Ballroom #3)

​Moderator TBA

  • Jenna Duttenhefner, NDSU, Metabolic Reprogramming in PDAC: The Contributions of GSTP1 to Energy Metabolism and Lipid Homeostasis

  • Lavinia Iancu, UND, Effects of Benzodiazepines on the Developmental Stages of Calliphora vicina Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830 (Diptera: Calliphoridae)

  • Gauthami Nair, NDSU, Dual targeting of ERK and PI3K pathways to impede pancreatic adenocarcinoma progression

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concurrent presentation session 3

4:20 PM

ND-ACES and Related Research (Ballroom #1)

Moderator TBA

  • ​Karl Van Horsen, NDSU, Development of a 3D Printed Bioreactor to Simulate Tumor Metastasis in vitro 

  • Nimasha Samarawickrama, UND, Machine learning approaches for classifying temporal patterns and tracing causality in RNA-Seq datasets

  • Mouhmad Elayyan, UND, A Theoretical Investigation of the Selectivity of Aza-Crown-Ether Structures Chelating Alkali Metal Cations for Potential Biosensing Applications

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Research Track A (Ballroom #2)

Moderator TBA

  • ​Sai Susmitha Guddanti, UND, Control of fast nuclear reactor for space propulsion using Reinforcement Learning

  • Xiangfa Wu, NDSU, Massive Production of Functional Nanofibers for Use in Advanced Composites, Energy Conversion and Storage, and Environmental Protection

  • Tiansong Qi, NDSU, An Enhanced Modeling Framework for Simulating Hydrologic Processes in a Depression-dominated Watershed

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Research Track B (Ballroom #3)

Moderator TBA

  • ​Sonia Tudjeu Chendjou, UND, Cocaine LC-MS Analysis in Insects for the Determination of Post-Mortem Interval 

  • FNU Tabish, UND, Buckling of imperfect unstiffened and stiffened cylindrical shells under external pressure 

  • Pooyan Vahidi Pashaki, NDSU, Threshold Optimization of in Situ HAPclay in Polymeric Scaffolds for Superior Biomechanical Tuning 

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